How to Restore Deleted Files From the Recycle Bin

Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.

• Western Governors University

Ryan Perian is a certified IT specialist who holds numerous IT certifications and has 12+ years' experience working in the IT industry support and management positions.

There's a very important reason Microsoft called this tool the Recycle Bin and not the Shredder—as long as you haven't emptied it, it's easy to restore files from the Recycle Bin in Windows.

We've all deleted files accidentally or simply changed our minds about the necessity of a particular file or folder, so don't be too hard on yourself if you're now second-guessing that last delete. These steps should apply to all Windows operating systems that use the Recycle Bin including Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and more.

How to Restore Deleted Files From the Recycle Bin

Time Required: Restoring deleted files should only take a few minutes, but it depends mostly on how quickly you can find the files you want to restore as well as how large they are.

Follow these easy steps to restore deleted files from the Recycle Bin back to their original locations on your computer:

1. Open the Recycle Bin by double-clicking or double-tapping its icon on the Desktop.

Recycle Bin doesn't show the files contained within any deleted folders you might see. Keep this in mind if you can't find a file you know you deleted—it may be in a folder you deleted instead. Restoring the folder will, of course, restore all the files it contained. To see which files are in a deleted folder before you restore it, see the command line steps below.

There isn't a Windows-provided way for restoring files that were deleted by emptying the Recycle Bin. If you've truly deleted a file in Windows, a file recovery program may be able to help you undelete it. See How to Recover Deleted Files for a start-to-finish tutorial on how to tackle this problem.

Note the Original Location of the files you're restoring so you know where they'll end up. You'll only see this location if you're viewing Recycle Bin in "details" view (you can toggle that view from the View menu).

Right-click or tap-and-hold the selection and choose Restore. Another way to restore the selection is to drag it out of the Recycle Bin window and into a folder of your choice. This will force the file to be restored wherever you choose.

If you use the Restore option (and don't drag them out), all files will be restored to their own respective locations. In other words, you can restore all of the files at once but that doesn't mean that they'll go to the same folder unless, of course, they were deleted from the same folder.

How to Restore a Specific File From a Deleted Folder

Most people are probably just fine restoring a folder without knowing which files are in it, but if you're curious what you're about to undelete or you want to restore only a select file or two from the deleted folder, you can do that with Command Prompt.

1. Open Command Prompt. One quick way to do this is to launch the Run dialog box with WIN+R and then enter cmd.

cd $Recycle.Bin 

If you get an error, try a different command, like cd Recycled or cd Recycler. Unfortunately, the exact command is different in different versions of Windows.

dir /s 

All the deleted files are listed in the Command Prompt window. If there are any folders in Recycle Bin, those files (and original file names) are shown as well.

To locate the correct folder, scroll through Command Prompt until you see a list of files you suspect are in the folder you want to restore. You'll see the folder name at the top of that section, next to its "Directory of" line.

Type cd, make a space, and then hit the Tab key over and over to cycle through all the folders in Recycle Bin. The point here is to find the one that lists the directory you identified in Step 5. In our example (see the screenshot below), the directory ends in "1002" (the very top section) so we'll keep hitting Tab until we find it.

What you're doing here is finding the specific folder that's holding the actual folder you want to access. In other words, the deleted folder you'll eventually see a few steps from now, is actually a subfolder in Recycle Bin, you just don't notice it in the Recycle Bin folder.

Type cd, make a space, and then use the Tab key again until you find the folder that has the deleted files you want to identify. In the example image, our folder is called $R0035T3.

copy "New Bitmap Image - Copy (2).bmp C:\Users\roblef\Desktop 

Press Enter. The command completed successfully if you see a "file(s) copied" message.

How to Show or 'Unhide' the Recycle Bin Program/Icon

Recycle Bin doesn't have to sit on your Windows Desktop all the time. While it's certainly an integrated part of the operating system and so can't be uninstalled, it can be hidden.

You, or maybe your computer maker, may have done this as a way to keep the Desktop a bit cleaner. It's perfectly fine that it's out of the way but, of course, that makes it hard to use.

Here's how to show the Recycle Bin again if it's been hidden:

If you see no icons on your desktop, you need to enable all the desktop icons. Do that by right-clicking the desktop and going to View > Show desktop icons.

Windows 11 & Windows 10

Open Desktop Icon Settings via Settings > Personalization > Themes and then Desktop icon settings (located under Related Settings). Check Recycle Bin and then choose OK.

Find Settings by right-clicking or tapping-and-holding the Start button.

Windows 8

Open Control Panel and search for show or hide common icons on the desktop. Select that link from the results and check Recycle Bin, and then choose OK.

Windows 7 & Vista

Right-click anywhere on the Desktop and choose Personalize. Select Change desktop icons on the left. Check Recycle Bin and then choose OK.

Windows XP

There is no built-in ability to hide the Recycle Bin in Windows XP but it is possible via a program called Tweak UI. If you're using Windows XP but don't see Recycle Bin, it's probably because this program was used to hide it, which you can also use to "unhide" it.

If you'd prefer that the Recycle Bin stays off the Desktop, another way to access it is via searching for recycle bin via Cortana (Windows 10) or the search bar (most other versions of Windows) and then opening the program when it appears in the list of results.

You could also start Recycle Bin by executing start shell:RecycleBinFolder from Command Prompt, or shell:RecycleBinFolder from the Run dialog box, but those methods are probably only helpful in the rarest of circumstances. In some versions of Windows, desk.cpl ,5 works, too.

If Windows is instantly deleting files even with the confirmation dialog enabled, check the other setting just above it. When you enable the Don't move files to the Recycle Bin option, files bypass the Recycle Bin completely. This means you don't ever have to empty it to clear up disk space, but it also means that you can't restore something from the Recycle Bin should you change your mind about keeping it.

Take note of the Custom size setting to make sure it isn't too small. If it is, Windows will "permanently" delete files if there's no room in the Recycle Bin.

Right-click on the desktop > select Personalize > Themes. Go to the Related Settings section > select Desktop icon settings > select Recycle Bin icon > Change Icon.

Right-click the recycle bin on your desktop, choose Properties, and select the appropriate drive. Under Settings for selected location, select Custom Size and enter the maximum amount of space you want to allocate to the recycle bin.